David Cameron will send 'temp’ to the Vatican after Ann Widdecombe's rejection

'Embarrassment' as Britain is to be without an ambassador to the Vatican after
Ann Widdecombe and other prominent figures turned down the role.

Ann Widdecombe turned down role of Britain's ambassador to the Vatican

Tim Walker. Edited by Richard Eden

6:30AM GMT 11 Dec 2010

Three months after Pope Benedict XVI’s historic visit to this country was hailed as a great success, David Cameron has failed to find anyone to send to the Vatican as our ambassador.

Mandrake can disclose that William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, is to send an interim charge d’affairs to run Britain’s embassy in the Holy See after a string of potential candidates, including Ann Widdecombe, Lord Patten of Barnes and Edward Leigh, turned down the role.

“It is becoming a genuine embarrassment,” says my man at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office. “The original idea was for it to be a political appointee, but now the job is being advertised here. The Government should never have indicated that it would be a political appointment if they did not have someone lined up.”

The “temp” will take up the post after Francis Campbell leaves at the end of next month. It is understood that the interim envoy will be in the Vatican for six months.

Widdecombe, a former Home Office minister, said in the summer that she had turned down the job because of an eye problem.

“Even before that happened, I was debating it,” she admitted last month. “I was thinking, do I really want three years, as an expat? Do I really want a job that’s going to take all day, every day in a heaving, hot capital city?”

This week, Lord Patten, the former Tory chairman, who is the chancellor of Oxford University, applied for the job of chairman of the BBC Trust.

By contrast, the Pope is about to announce the name of his new ambassador to this country, just days after it was made public that Archbishop Faustino Sainz Muñoz was leaving his post because of poor health.